“What is it?”
“Did you kill the agint?”
Wake as was O’Rourke, he stood grandly up; the ould honest, proud look came into his pale, wasted, but still handsome face; and pointing his long, thin finger to heaven, he said, in a deep, low tone, the earnestness of which I shall never forget to my dying day, “As I hope for justice some day here, and mercy hereafter, I did not!”
The hug I gave him would have broken many a strong man’s ribs, let alone a ghost’s; but I couldn’t help it. Bedad, if I had been a Roosian bear itself, that hug would have been a credit to me.
“What on earth am I to do?” asked Miles.
“Anything you plase,” says I, “whin you get there! But you are on the water now, worse luck—and that’s what bothers me. I wouldn’t give a thrawneen for your life, if you are discovered and recognised as Miles O’Rourke. There’s two hundred pounds reward offered for you, and the evidence seems pretty strong against you.”
“How would they know me?” says he. “You didn’t—and no wonder! Shure whin I came on boord I weighed fourteen stone; and now, ten stone in the one scale would pitch me up to the ceiling out of the other!”
“That’s thrue enough,” says I; “but you must bear in mind I tuck you for somebody else’s ghost, and didn’t make any allowance for the starving you have had, which, particularly as a stowaway, they would be sure to do. But now you must get back to the hould. I’ll contrive to drop half my rations and a trifle of grog down every day—see Mary, and consult with her. Shure, one woman’s wit is worth a dozen men’s in a case like this.”
“But—” says he.
“Hush!” says I; “I hear futsteps. We are in a tight place now! There’s only one chance for us: I’m aslape, and you’re a ghost again!”